


Daughter of Gods

by UnpredictableEasty



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Finding Love, Gen, Girls Kissing, Growing Up, Psychological Drama, Violence, bad parent, fucked up families, mildly happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnpredictableEasty/pseuds/UnpredictableEasty
Summary: She was always told that she was the daughter of Sun. But perhaps, this was not a fairy tale even in the slightest.
Relationships: Diya/Arushi
Kudos: 3





	Daughter of Gods

She was only 5 years old when she finally understood.

  
Understood what her little ears tried to catch when the soft spoken words left her mother’s lips. When they would both lie, her small arms around her mother’s torso, her tiny head on her mother’s arm and a whispered silence in between. Her mother would often tell her stories during bed time. There were many things that she still didn’t get the meaning of. Mostly the only thing that filtered through was that there was always a monster and to slay him, there was a demigod.

  
She knew that these stories were different from the ones that her friends got to hear from their parents. Her friend, Ridhima, had told her that her dad told her stories of princesses in their castle. She wondered how those stories were different but she knew that whatever her mother told her was way more awesome.

  
Her mother would sometimes pause in the middle of the story, a sudden silence accompanied by vacant eyes and a smile that Diya didn’t like to see on her mother’s face. It always looked like her mother would cry. But she would come out of it and caress her cheek and she would whisper those words again, her lips moving. She would always fail at understanding of what her mother said but she wasn’t worried. She was sure her mother was just thinking about the story.

  
Her eyes would eventually droop, her mother’s warm presence a lullaby in silence. The much bigger hand that held hers would send a sense of safety. She would go to sleep in safety of her mother’s arms and leaving the soft sobbing voice behind.

  
But now she understood the whispered word. She was in her mother’s room, artwork on display at every surface. The concept remained the same, different faces with only one name: Apollo.

  
Her mother was kneeling infront of her, trying to set her hair in an elaborate style and trying to tell her why she should always look pretty. Never less than a 10. Why she should always have a smile on her pink lips, a blush on her cheeks, her hair always silky and shiny and her eyes deep and penetrating. And then she repeated those words while pointing toward one of the paintings. A man with radiating skin, arched eyes, sharp cheekbones and a face that would melt everyone’s heart.

  
“You are a daughter of Apollo, remember my child. You are a daughter of God of Sun.”

  
Apollo was beautiful, radiant, powerful and center of universe.

  
And so was she.

  
*

  
At 8, she first felt the slick feeling of putting on a lipstick.

  
With running nose she sat infront of her mother’s full length mirror. She could see her own red nose and pale face. She had been suffering from cold for two days now. She was not sick enough to not function properly but still ill enough to look like it.

  
They were supposed to go to a function. As much as Diya understood, it was very important to attend but her mother could not find a babysitter. Her mother never let her stay with their relatives; she never understood why that was. Her friends had million stories about visiting their maternal grandparents and having lots of fun.

  
Her mother’s frowning face disrupted her thought process. She inspected Diya’s face, the frown deepening all the more. Different article of makeup littered on the table infront of her mirror. She momentiraly gazed at it before snapping it back to her mother’s face. She felt something inside her as she felt that her mother looked like she was looking at something really disgusting. The little girl could hardly blame her mother. She could not look at her face either. She had not looked this ugly all her life, her face was blotchy, her upper lip was dry because of her nose running and her eyes had dark circles under them.

  
“With that face, how would your father ever recognize you?” Her mother asked in anger.

  
Diya could feel the tears starting at her eyes. It was one of her nightmare that one day his dad would come back and he would not recognize her. She wondered how much she looked like her father. Everyone said that only her eyes were similar to her mother’s, did that mean that the rest of her face looked like her father’s?

  
She again looked at her face, today her ugly face didn’t look like it was of a daughter of God of Sun. She was not glowing, not the person who would gravitate everyone toward her. She felt irritated at seeing her pale skin. She remembered her mother saying that sometimes she wanted to tear her own face, and suddenly she felt like doing that. She just couldn’t let her face stay like that.

  
She watched as her mother took a deep breath. She suddenly grabbed a brush from the table.

  
“We have one hour, don’t worry, you’’ look beautiful again.” Her mother said and smiled and for first time, a smile from her mother scared her.

  
After an hour of being a good girl and sitting without moving, she chastised herself for being scared of her own mother. She looked at herself and at her mother’s work. Her eyes widened and she squealed and hugged her mother.

  
“I look so pretty! Thank you mummy!” She said.

  
She had never looked this pretty. She couldn’t believe it was her. Perhaps makeup really helped in looking beautiful.

  
She was again glowing like sun.

  
She was again glowing like her father.

  
*

  
She was 15 when the doubt started creeping under the safe umbrella of her mother’s teaching. The things she had believed in for years, since she could understand the things around her. When she studied and found solace in logic and facts, she started questioning the things that she had been told. Her mother had told her to focus on biology, to be as proficient in medicine in future as her father was. After all he was God of Medicine and Healing.

  
She wondered if her mother understood what studying biology can do to all the conceptions she had stuffed in her mind. When she read about the brain and the nervous system, it was the first time she started wondering how her brain could be different than others.

  
It was her brief study on psychology that made her wonder if all the things she had been told was even true. If her mother lied to her or worse, if she believed it truly. She feared that the latter was true.

  
She had learned it soon enough that the goal of Diya to be pretty, to be intelligent, to be an artist and to be perfect in every field she took was not just for her sake. Her mother ached to meet her father. She had studied enough, read enough novels to ask to herself who could have been her father. Had her mother been so much in shock that she had started believing in this thing? A story? A myth?

  
Sometimes she asked her mother where her father was. She was now used to listening only one reply.

  
“You haven’t made him proud yet, Diya.”

  
It stung, she knew that maybe there was no Apollo but it still stung to know that whatever she did, it would never be enough for her father to come back and acknowledge her.  
She sometimes felt that the touch of insanity was in her too. When she would start talking to the painting in her room like it was actually her father. She expected guidance from it, believing from childhood that this was where she would find solution to everything. And when the thoughts and doubts about his father would not leave her alone, ironically, she would pray to his father.

  
“Are you actually my father? Where are you with your music when I need it to sleep? Where are you with your medicine when I have scrap on my knees? Where are you when I want a wise word? Where are you when I need the light of the sun?”

  
She knelt and repeated the prayer that she had constructed herself, in all the madness of believing the lies; she tried to remind herself through the prayers that this was nothing but a figment of imagination.

  
She could see her reflection in the shiny surface of the glass that covered the painting. It revolted her how her face was nothing but a joke. Her mascara was smudged and it flowed down the face with tears that escaped her eyes. She knew she should not care about it, this was what her mother kept making her believe but she could not help it. This was not her, the disfigured face in the mirror, a face that even she could not look at, was not her.

  
She averted her eyes and stood up, walking to the bathroom. She removed the ruined makeup from her face and washed it, applying the makeup anew.

  
After all, she had to look perfect before stepping outside.

  
*

  
She had no idea what went wrong. It was routine, her taking out cereal out of the cupboard and her mum sitting on the table, sipping coffee.

  
“Have you seen your Dad?” Her mother asked.

  
She looked at the calendar, and sure enough it marked 22 July, her birthday. Her mother would always ask this question on her birthday, like she expected her dad to show suddenly on her birthday when he hadn’t bothered to show up all her life.

  
There was something about it this time. Her voice was too calm. When Diya looked toward her, there was a gentle shake in her hands, her back straight.

  
She put the cereal down, her eyes scanning the room, searching for something wrong. She wondered if subconsciously she was also looking for escape route.

  
“No” She whispered out, her throat suddenly feeling dry. “Maybe next year.”

  
She felt like a statue as she watched her mother put the mug down on the table mechanically. Her fingers twitched with pain and when she looked at it, she found she was gripping the counter tightly.

  
“You’re 21.” Her mother whispered.

  
Diya inched away from the dining table where her mother was sitting. She could feel her heartbeat increasing; she just had this sense of danger. It was surreal; her mother had always been her safe harbor.

  
The jingle of her mother’s bangle traveled through to her. Everything was silent for a moment, yet so full of noise. The tick of clock was loud in her ears, the sound of vehicles coming in through the window, the rustle of her clothes as they brushed against the counter, the tap of her hesitant footsteps as she slowly made her way out of the kitchen. There was a moment when her blood pounded in her ear.

  
There was a sudden screech from the chair that her mother was sitting on and suddenly, before her brain caught up with her action, she was sprinting away.

  
“YOU ARE AT FAULT!”

  
The screech echoed around her, this voice that she had never heard. It sounded almost demonic and she ran toward her room hoping to save her life from whatever demon had taken possession of her mother.

  
It was lucky that she had left her door open. With every step, she could feel the heartbeat in her throat, her mother running behind her, the clinking of her payal that had been music to her from start was suddenly a source of horror. She ran blindly, her tears blurring her vision. She hit against something but didn’t stop as she heard sound of glass breaking.

  
As she reached her door, she turned and looked at her mother’s face. A stranger’s face loomed infront of her. Her hair was in disarray, her eyes had a craze in it. Something Diya had seen shadows of but had thought was nothing. For once her mother didn’t look beautiful, she didn’t even look ugly. She just looked like she did in her nightmares. She took one more look at her mother and slammed the door, locking it.

  
She slid down the door, becoming a heap of bones and muscles against it.

  
“I HAD THOUGHT YOU WOULD MAKE HIM COME BACK! YOU TURNED OUT TO BE USELESS, FUCKING USELESS! ALL THESE YEARS I TRIED TO MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF YOUR FATHER’S NAME AND YOU STILL TURNED OUT TO BE THIS! YOU COULDN’T BRING BACK YOUR FATHER!” Pounding echoed against the door with every word that came out of her mother.

  
Diya kept her body pressed against the door. She tucked her chin next to her chest, sobs escaping her mouth.

  
She had dreams, no, nightmares in which her mother’s face would transform from angelic sweetness to malevolent spirit. She had avoided this, telling herself again and again that she was daughter of Apollo, that her mother was right because she would never lie to her. She had ignored the signs, the manic glint in her eyes sometimes, the way she would always look obsessively over Apollo’s painting.

She could hear the things breaking outside, screeches of pain echoing in her house. It seemed fitting, this life that they had created, a house to live in, to be comfortable in, that was made by her mother. Like the illusion that she had created around them. This deceitful lie that they had been living in, shattered at last. After living all these years, believing they were living a normal life, she had come face to face with the truth, the truth that she had seen reflected from her mother’s vanity mirror since she was a child.  
She took a deep breath, the tears flowing still. She couldn’t just stay behind the door forever. She shakily got up, putting pressure on the desk beside the gate. Her hands slipped on the pens on it and they tumbled to the floor. Her hands shook with the force of her sobs as she again tried to get up, succeeding this time. She reached for her mobile, sitting innocently between all her stationary.

  
It was hard for her to still her fingers enough to dial the number she wanted but after four tries she finally put in right numbers.

  
The dial tone hurt her ear for no reason and the click that sounded as someone picked it up felt like oxygen after staying underwater for long.

  
“Nana, it’s Diya.”

  
*

  
Her mother had disappeared before her maternal grandparents showed up. It was her grandpa’s gentle knocking that had roused her from restless sleep she had gotten into. She had thrown herself in his arms; they had always told her that she can come to them anytime. Her mother hadn’t liked her spending time with them.

  
They had asked her where her mother was but she had no idea. They had eventually decided to call everyone they knew and look around her neighborhood for them.

  
So here she was, looking for her mother in the worst rain that they had gotten by now. More than her getting wet, she was afraid for her mother. None of her friends knew where she was, she hadn’t contacted any of them and this weather scared her for her mother’s safety.

  
She had caught her reflection in the glass of one of the stores. Her face, for once devoid of makeup. She felt exposed to the world, vulnerable to attacks of people who will think her less because she looked less without a cover of beauty on her face. Her mind jumped to Apollo and she clutched her head, trying to stop herself from even thinking of that name.

  
She spun around as she heard a honk from behind and found herself infront of a car. Her momentary lapse of control would have caused her life. She shook herself from her stupor, she couldn’t worry about those lies, she had her mother to find.

  
The car did not move and neither did she. She stared at the vipers moving, a hazy face behind it. The rain pounded on her back, her eyes full of water.

  
There was an audible click and suddenly the person behind the wheel stepped out.

  
“Hey, are you all right?” Her voice was like music.

  
She had hastily shut the car door but she herself stood out. Her hair starting to curl from getting wet, framing her face. She had a concerned look on her face and there were drops sliding one by one from her face and for one second Diya could only think one thing…

  
She had never seen a more beautiful view.

  
The stranger stepped toward her, Diya had no idea why, she probably looked crazy standing under the rain.

  
“Hey” She said.

  
“My mother…” Her lips moved. Her teeth were chattering, she noticed it now.

  
“What?” She was now almost infront of her.

  
“My mother…. She is missing.” She said in a haze.

  
There was a second of silence and she suddenly felt the gravity of her situation. Her mother was missing and anything could have happened to her. She could be lying dead in the ditch in this horrible weather and it would be her fault, Diya was at fault for not taking care of this problem for this start. For ignoring it, for thinking it was nothing.

  
“She is gone. She b.. believes that I am daughter of Apollo and she just…”

  
Her legs stopped supporting her and she fell, the stranger's hands trying to catch her but slipping because of water.

  
She knelt before her, still looking at her.

  
“This is my fault” She sobbed. “ I let her believe. I am not Apollo’s daughter, I am just an ugly human who could not take care of her mother.”

  
She tried to scratch at the road with her nails like it was sand. Her nails protested against the cruel treatment and she felt the place where her skin teared because of friction.

  
She felt her chin being pulled up, angelic blue eyes looking at her.

  
“I was claimed Satan’s child.” The angel said.

  
Diya could only gaze at her.

  
Her hands were held in gentle but strong hands. She put their hands between them.

  
“This is not our fault. Do you hear me?”

  
And for the first time she could see in her blue, blue eyes. The sadness that she had looked into whenever she looked in the mirror. She had seen the same loneliness, feeling that no one could understand what they were going through.

  
For the first time she felt she was not alone in the world and she could see this hope in the angel’s eyes too.

  
“Now come with me, I’ll help you.”

  
Diya did not ask why she was helping her. She didn’t feel like she ever wanted to ask this stranger anything, she felt like they already knew things about each other that nobody could know.

  
They found her mother in a cafe, gazing at her coffee with vacant eyes. She behaved like nothing had happened and Diya did not know how to feel about that.

She could not help but hug the stranger, Arushi on that rain filled night.  
And she could not help herself but kiss her on an autumn night with everything she had.  
Her monsters were still alive but now atleast she had someone with whom she can slay them.


End file.
